A Change of Heart

Malachi 4:1-6

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be

These are the opening lines from this beloved hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, written by Thomas Chisolm in 1923. More than a hundred years ago, many things have changed, but God remains just as faithful, merciful, and loyal to his people today as then.

This was true for the people of Malachi’s day at the end of the OT, too. A thousand years before this book was written, God made a special covenant with the Hebrew people at Mount Sinai to form them into the nation of Israel, as recorded in Exodus. This covenant fulfilled a promise he made to Abraham hundreds of years before that. When the second generation of Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, God repeated this covenant with them a second time, as recorded in Deuteronomy.

Near the end of Deuteronomy (Dt 27-28), God explained a series of blessings and curses that would happen to them – blessings if they were faithful and loyal to him, curses if they were unfaithful and disloyal. Nearly 1,000 years later, they had now experienced some effects of the curses by being taken from their land as prisoners of war. But God also rescued and restored them back to their land again, which his where Malachi comes in.

Very few years had passed, however, and they were already showing signs of disloyalty. This book shows that by recording a series of six conversations with God in which he charged the people with disloyalty to him. They responded to God, though, with surprise and asked for proof, so he gave them evidence of their disloyalty. After these six conversations, God closed the message with a preview of the future and a call for renewed loyalty to him. Let’s first look at his preview of the future.

God gives two official, vivid previews of the future.

With the Babylonian and Assyrian captivities behind them, God wanted Israel to not take their future for granted. Those who concluded it was useless and unprofitable to serve God (Mal 3:13-18) and more beneficial to live arrogant, materialistic, self-serving lives would have one kind of future to look forward to, while those who genuinely believed, feared, and followed God regardless of immediate, tangible benefits would have another very different kind of future to look forward to. Previews like this can be helpful.

• A parent tells their child if he does his homework he can play after supper, but if not, he will lose privileges.
• A doctor advises her patient if she stops smoking, she will improve her health and longevity, but if not, she will increase her risk of disease.
• A financial advisor projects his client will have a stable, secure retirement if she sets aside a certain amount of money, but if not, she’ll face anxiety, debt, and uncertainty.
• An employer discloses if an employee will perform consistently and well, he will receive regular raises and good benefits, but if not, he will lose the job completely.

A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. (Prov 22:3)

Previews like this motivate us to behave better in the present. If we take them seriously, we make changes to secure the desirable, positive outcome and to avoid the undesirable, negative one. This is what a wise person will do, but a foolish person will ignore the warning and forge ahead in the wrong direction. Here was God’s preview for Israel.

Unbelieving people will be burned up.

The first part of this preview gives an undesirable, negative possible outcome.

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,” says the LORD of hosts, “that will leave them neither root nor branch. (Mal 4:1)

Here God warns that people who live arrogant, materialistic, self-serving lives will be destroyed. He describes this future time as a hot, fiery furnace or oven and the unbelieving people as chaff.

Chaff is the thin, dry outer shell of grain that breaks down and falls off when the grain is harvested. It is so insignificant that it blows away like dust. When these particles blow or fall into flames, they burn up and disappear immediately. God also describes this burning as a devouring, scorching fire that will destroy entire trees so thoroughly that neither branches nor roots will be left behind.

We can envision an entire landscape of grain fields and fruit orchards blackened, charred, and smoking from a massive fire that blew across the land. Only here, it is arrogant, materialistic, self-serving, unbelieving people who are burnt up, not fruit, grain, and land. This future would be there’s if they continued to live arrogant, materialistic, self-serving lives. But thankfully, there is a second part to this preview.

Believing people will go free.

The second part of this preview gives a desirable, positive possible outcome.

But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this,” says the Lord of hosts. (Mal 4:2-3)

God uses two concepts to describe this positive future. First, the Sun, which like the previous negative future outcome is a fire, but here it is a positive fire, one that gives light, brightness, happiness, and warmth, not death and destruction. An earth-borne fire destroys, but the glow of airborne fire, the sun, brings growth and well-being.

The “wings” that give healing here aren’t bird wings but the rays of light that beam from the sun, the edges or fringes of the sun’s light that reach and touch Earth, bringing growth, health, life, and warmth to all things.

Though this description includes all sorts of positive benefits and blessings God gives, it emphasizes one specifically – how God gives righteousness to his people. From this, we see something that Scripture teaches frequently in a variety of ways, that God is not the source of righteousness only because he does and will make all wrongs right (which is certainly the case), but also because he alone makes arrogant, materialistic, self-serving people righteous. In this way, Christ is and would be “the Light of the world” (Jn 8:12).

This leads to the second concept God uses to explain this possible, positive future. Those who are loyal to him will not only enjoy happiness, light, warmth, and righteousness from God as the Earth benefits from the heat and light of the sun’s rays, they would also go free like calves released from their stall. This image portrays a young calf which a farmer has contained in a very small pen for a while. When that energetic calf is released into an open field to graze, it leaps and dances exuberantly with sheer, unbridled delight.

To expand this picture even further, God pulls in the previous negative picture of unbelieving, wicked people being like burnt, charred ashes left behind from a raging fire to say that his people who are like dancing young calves would trample on their ashes. You can envision when a field burns down here, followed by fresh, green new growth bursting through as a transformed meadow for new calves to graze in.

This description pictures a dramatic reversal. When we look around, it may seem like arrogant, materialistic, self-serving people thrive as faithful, loyal, God-fearing people suffer and survive. But in the end, when the Sun of Righteousness rises, those unbelieving people will be as burnt ashes, and the believing people of God will be blessed and exalted in every way. Their future will be filled with delight, freedom, and success.

Before moving on, we should notice an important detail. In describing both possible future outcomes for people, God includes the statement “says the Lord of hosts” both times. This phrase means something like “the Lord of heaven’s armies” and portrays God as the superior, supreme commander of countless angelic armies.

This means he outranks and overpowers all earthly powers and can therefore guarantee that the two possible outcomes he is previewing here will certainly occur – no one or nothing can stand in his way or prevent it from happening. The betting odds of these future outcomes are 0-1, which is 100%.

With these two possible outcomes now clearly in mind, which path would you want to take? It’s at this point that God called his people to choose their path.

He calls his people to remember their covenant with him.

Here God calls his people to look in two directions, not left and right, but backward and forward, to reflect on the past and peer into the future. This encourages the best perspective when making important decisions. When you make a big choice, you should do so considering what God has done in history and what he promises to do in the end.

We normally make navigation choices, for instance, like a car sitting in traffic, seeing what’s immediately around us; but it’s far better to make travel choices based on an aerial view from a helicopter, seeing what’s behind and ahead. Unfortunately, we don’t usually have helicopters (or flying cars) to get around, but for more important, spiritual and life choices, we do have God’s ultimate aerial shot of history and the future in his Word.

First, to look back he tells them to “remember” the Law of Moses “… with the statues and ordinances” (Mal 3:4). With this instruction, he is telling them to pay close, diligent attention to everything he had said in the covenant he made with them through Moses.

He also describes this covenant and law as what happened at “Horeb.” Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai and seems to be a more personal, sentimental way to refer to this special place in Israel’s history. By pairing Horeb with “laws, statues, and ordinances,” God seems to point back to place where his covenant relationship with Israel began, much like how a spouse may refer to the wedding vows of their marriage or to the special place where they proposed, married, or honeymooned.

The desired effect of this pairing portrays God’s covenant with Israel as more than a historical event and record to know about, and more than a formal, legal arrangement to observe. It portrays the covenant as a memorable, special relationship that evokes fond, heartfelt affection, devotion, and love rather than duty and obligation.

Malachi was calling Judah to a lifestyle guided at all times not by human wisdom, ambition, or societal expectations but by the thoughtful application of God’s Word. (Taylor & Clendenen)

Calling them to “remember” all the words of the covenant also resembles a married couple remembering the words of their wedding vows and premarital counseling. The longer a marriage endures, the more easily one or both spouses may lose awareness of their commitments and vows to one another and to the counseling and guidance they received before they married.

The results of such forgetting can be devastating, even leading to the destruction or end of the marriage. (Auto-pilot, existence, neglect, and survival are not good patterns in marriage.) But those who truly devoted to their spouse will reflect often on the moment and place of their wedding and will recall their counseling and vows, taking those things more deeply to heart and determining more, not less, and to practice those things in love.

Said another way, God called the people of Israel back to attention. They had “lost their first love” and had turned away their hearts and eyes from their covenant relationship with him, looking covetously and with envy at the arrogant, materialistic, self-serving lifestyles and people around them. They had become dissatisfied with God.

But those who genuinely believed in and feared him would have bright future awaiting them, one in which God would place his righteousness in their hearts and in which they would enjoy the fullest degree of happiness, light, warmth, and well-being of his healing touch. But those who chose the arrogant, materialistic, self-serving path would prove their unfaithfulness over time suffer destruction and judgement with the wicked.

He would send another reminder.

To help Israel prepare for the future day of reckoning, God promised to send another reminder, or rather a person to remind then and prepare the way. Just as the respected OT prophet Elijah had called the people of Israel back to God away from worshiping Baal, so God would send another man to prepare them for salvation from coming judgment.

I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. (Mal 4:5)

God would send a man like this some 400 years later, named John the Baptist, and he prepared the people of Israel for the coming of Jesus to Earth. When John the Baptist was born, the angel told his mother, Elizabeth, that he would be like Elijah and then quoted Mal 4:5-6 in connection with his birth:

He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Jesus himself would later mention this prophecy as connected somehow to John the Baptist (Mt 17:10-13; Mk 9:11-13). But it is also possible that John that Baptist was simply like what this prophecy foretold without being the full fulfillment of it.

I say this since it’s also possible this prophecy looks forward even further to a still-future time when Christ will return not only the first time to present himself as our Savior but to return finally, fully a second time to judge the world in a way that more closely resembles the burning of the wicked and the healing and freeing of the righteous here in Mal 4:1-3.

Elijah himself is often suggested as one of two unnamed witnesses in Rev 11:3. Scripture repeatedly links him to end‑time judgment, and Mal 4:5 promises “Elijah” will come before the great day of the Lord. While Jesus taught that John the Baptist functioned in this role somehow, the prophecy does not require that the fulfillment be limited to John alone.
Elijah’s OT ministry fits the pattern of the witnesses in Rev 11, calling down fire and shut up the sky, miracles that mirror Elijah’s historical ministry. His appearance with Moses at the Transfiguration of Christ (Mt 17:2-3) in the gospels further supports the idea that these two men represent the Law and the Prophets and may reappear together in the last days. Both died (or were taken away) at the end of their lives by God in abnormal, mysterious ways, so that makes this possibility even more fascinating.

Still, Scripture never identifies the witnesses by name, so Elijah remains a strong possibility, but not a certainty. At any rate, we know that while the full judgment and day of the Lord will come in the future, it began in a special way when Christ came into the world the first time, preceded by John the Baptist.

He would restore foundational relationships.

Whatever the case, the ministry of this Elijah person would serve an important purpose:

He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. (Mal 4:6)

One commentator explains this promise in a helpful way:

The point is that fathers and sons would no longer live self-serving lives, but fathers will take their sons to heart and sons will take to heart their fathers, considering the effects of their actions on one another in the course of their lives. (Taylor & Clendenen)

When people take their relationship with God seriously, then end up taking seriously the other important relationships in their lives – the parent/child, father/son relationship, esp. This is a central theme and principle throughout the OT law and is the same in the NT. It is clear, direct application and reflection of how Jesus taught that loving God is inseparable from loving your neighbor.

A key mark that any group of people, Israel or otherwise, is living an arrogant, materialistic, self-serving life is that they suffer serious breakdowns and breakups in close family relationships, like husband/wife and parent/child. A mark of any group of people taking seriously their relationship with God, fearing and loving him in a devoted way, is a strengthening, prioritizing, restoration, and building up of these same relationships.

While this is true, Malachi may be saying something else profound here, too, esp. with the second statement, that “he would turn the hearts of the children to the fathers.” He may be speaking about more than just immediate parent/child relationships and may be referring to a much larger scope, that of restoring respect of one generation of his people for those people of faith who preceded them many years before – “restoring the respect of descendants for their forefathers.”

This means he could be speaking about restoring the people of Israel to a shared faith with and respect for men and fathers of faith in their past like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, etc. When a generation or group of people lose connection with, knowledge of, and respect for key people who’ve gone before them, it is both a cause and symptom of a weak faith and devotion of their own and restoring connection with and respect for such people is both a means and result of renewed faith and devotion. The nearly 200-yr. old hymn, Faith of Our Fathers, emphasizes this spiritual reality as it calls us to remember and respect those followers of Christ who have suffered and even died for their relationship with God – at the hands of Roman Catholic persecution and more.

Faith of the martyrs, living still
in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;
oh, how our hearts beat high with joy
whene’er we hear that glorious word!

The martyrs chained in prison cells
were still in heart and conscience free,
and bless’d would be their children’s fate
if they, like them, should die for thee!

Faith of the martyrs, we will love
both friend and foe in all our strife,
and preach thee, too, as love knows how,
by saving word and faithful life!

Faith of the martyrs, holy faith,
we will be true to thee till death.

May God grant us a deeper respect for our fathers in the faith throughout history.

Now, when we come to the NT, we see that this closing prophecy of Malachi finds its fullest meaning in Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, the Elijah-esque messenger who prepared the way, explained that Christ would do what no other prophet could ever do:

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Mt 3:11-12)

Can you see his references to Malachi’s prophecy here? Jesus is the One in whom the two vivid previews of the future are accomplished. He is the Sun of Righteousness who rises with healing for all who fear God’s name, and he is also the Lord who separates the wheat from the chaff and brings fiery judgment upon the proud and unbelieving.

The same Christ who will one day judge the world first came to save sinners. He bore the judgment that his people deserve so that all who repent and believe in him might receive not the fire of condemnation, but the cleansing gift of the Holy Spirit and the righteousness of God. So, Malachi’s final word does not leave us staring at a coming fire of judgment. It leads us to the only Savior who can rescue us from it. The One who judges is also the One who died and rose again so that guilty, proud, self-seeking people like us can be forgiven, made righteous, and set free.

So, let me ask you today, how’s your heart? Our forever faithful God has spoken clearly, and he has shown you where each path leads. If you have never trusted in Christ, then turn to him now in faith and repentance to escape the fiery judgment to come. Do not cling to pride, materialism, and self-seeking when Christ stands ready to save.

If you do belong to Christ, then renew your devotion to him today. Turn your heart again toward your faithful Savior by becoming more attentive to his words, remembering them, treasuring them, and letting them shape your life more than the material, self-seeking voices and influences do, pressing in on you from every side. May you treat God’s Word the same way that a long-married spouse should treat their premarital counseling and wedding vows – treasuring them and bringing them to bear on every aspect of life in love.

Little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. (1 Jn 2:28)

This closing message of Malachi leaves us with both a warning and a hope. The warning is that the day of the Lord is surely coming, and no arrogant, unbelieving heart will stand in that day – including your own if you do not believe on Christ as your Savior. The hope is that our forever faithful God has not left us without a Savior, without his Word, or without a clear call to return to him. So, remember his words, look to Jesus Christ, and respond while there is still time. For those who fear his name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings – and that’s a promise.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine with 10,000 beside

Great is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me